Buenos Aires disco blaze kills 169

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A blaze in a Buenos Aires nightclub packed with young people
celebrating the New Year holidays killed at least 169 and injured
375, city officials said today.

The blaze is thought to have been caused by a flare being fired
into the club's ceiling, sending burning debris onto the crowd and
triggering a stampede.

"The fire spread in a minute and we were a mountain of people
trying to escape," said survivor Ariel Monges, 25, who lost a
friend and a cousin in the fire and was searching for another
friend at the Rivadavia Hospital.

The flares are sold on streets all over Latin America for the
New Year holiday festivities.

Local media reported that as many as 3,000 to 4,000 people may
have been inside the Republica Cromagnon club in the gritty,
run-down neighbourhood of Once listening to a band when the fire
broke out an hour before midnight on Thursday.

Children as young as 10 were among the victims in what was being
described as one of Argentina's worst disasters, according to
people helping in the rescue effort.

"The city does not remember such a grave situation," city health
secretary Alfredo Stern said.

Witnesses told Reuters reporters on the scene that a flare was
shot into the club's ceiling, which was covered with foam. Pieces
of the burning ceiling fell, triggering a stampede and many people
collapsed from smoke inhalation.

"There are versions that flares caused the fire, but I cannot
confirm this until we have more information from the fire
department," Mayor Anibal Ibarra told TN television.

It was not immediately clear if fire exits and doors were
unblocked.

Police said the fire was extinguished quickly, but rescue
workers spent a few hours removing people on stretchers from inside
the club.

Television showed pictures of the bodies lying on the sidewalks
outside the club.

Parents first rushed to the scene desperate to find their sons
and daughters amid the chaos, but then flocked to the 14 hospitals
where the dead and injured were taken.

At a makeshift morgue in a garage beside the club, witnesses
said 30 bodies were lined up and family members were allowed to
pass to identify them.

"There was a girl who must have been around 10 years old," said
Fernando Justiniano, a former fireman who helped in the rescue.
"She was asphyxiated poor thing, and she was burned."

The blaze was the worst in the Americas since a supermarket fire
in neighbouring Paraguay last August killed nearly 400 people. The
owners are accused of closing the doors after the fire broke out to
stop looting.

Many other fires have occurred in Latin America in recent years
because of fireworks, sold on most every street corner around the
holidays.

Exactly three years ago, more than 300 people were killed when a
fire roared through a crowded shopping area in the Peruvian capital
Lima. The blaze started with an explosion at a shop selling
fireworks for New Year parties.

Thursday night's Buenos Aires club fire recalled a similar blaze
in the United States in February 2003 when a pyrotechnics display
at the start of a heavy metal concert ignited sound-proofing
material at a club in Rhode Island, killing 100 people and injuring
nearly 200.